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Been there done that3/14/2023 It would be easier to plop down on the ground and say humbug to anything that breaks the simple rule. Multiple scientists in multiple disciplines are sputtering over the conundrum at this very moment, I’m sure. And it’s a little mind-blowing-scary, even-to try to come up with an alternative. That definition of species you learned in grade school seems obvious and true because it works most of the time. A mom might even pass along a combination of up to five different male genomes while leaving her own genes out entirely, save for the mitochondrial DNA that makes this “species” an identifiable family. Research suggests the lineage has at times gone for millions of years without any outside influence but that mamas can, at any point, choose to shake things up with a random smattering of stolen DNA. They use some combination of these genes, or none of them at all, when they create their children. Instead, these lizard ladies-tied together only by shared mitochondrial DNA, which is the parcel that mothers pass on wholesale to their offspring without any paternal DNA cutting in-mate with males of several species in their genus to collect an assortment of genes. Several “species” (cough cough) of the salamander genus Ambystoma have been female-only for millions of years.30 But they don’t rely on anything as pedestrian as asexual cloning to keep their good thing going. This would be enough to break our long-standing concept of what a species is, but things get more bizarre. Some of these individuals also identify with the term “transgender,” but others don’t Samoan culture already gives them a name that doesn’t imply they’ve changed something about themselves. Samoans who are assigned male at birth and live as women, gay men, or a nonbinary third gender are known as fa’afafine, while people assigned female at birth who live as men or lesbian women or have a nonbinary identity are called fa’afatama. That colonial influence-including from the United States-has continued to negatively affect Hawaiian gender tolerance. Sex isn’t the only biological distinction that seems incredibly complicated once we take a closer look. Unfortunately, they found their position as respected members of society put in jeopardy as colonizers imposed outside gender norms on the islands. Native Hawaiian and Tahitian cultures historically understood the validity of māhū, who are assigned male at birth but identify as something in between male and female. A member of this group can marry a man without judgment or punishment. Tracing back to the precolonial era in Uganda, the Lango people recognize the existence of mudoko dako, who are assigned male at birth but live as women in adulthood.
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